Wednesday, October 14, 2015

My cat can count to three.

My little cat, Sophie, gets a treat every night. It's three pieces of hard cat food. Ever since she had her kidney problems many years ago, she has to have wet food to keep her really hydrated. She ultimately gave in and decided that wet food was real enough food, but she hasn't forgotten that dry food is oh so much yummier, at least from her perspective.

So every night I scatter three pieces of dry food near her food bowl. (They are technically dental treats, but she doesn't really have enough teeth for this to be relevant any more.) She goes crazy with joy when I bring out these treats. I scatter them because otherwise she'd inhale them so quickly she would forget that I even gave them to her. This way, she has to take a few steps before eating the next one.

One day, I saw her eat one, then another, and then she couldn't find the third. But she knew it was there. She determinedly looked around until she found it. Yay! My cat can count to three!

(I learned from Watership Down that animals, or maybe it's just rabbits, count "one, two, many." But Sophie can count to three!)

Then I stopped and looked again. Sophie had indeed counted to three, finding three treats. But she was still looking around, determinedly. And I realized: My cat can count to four!

I will hunt down every piece of those treats.